Backing up external drive to Time Capsule using Time Machine

[PatriotInvasion]

So, I have a 128GB 13" rMBP and purchased a 1TB LaCie Thunderbolt drive to supplement storage.

My plan was to backup my Mac to my Time Capsule using Time Machine as well as the external drive when it happens to be plugged in.

Unfortunately, it appears Time Machine wants to back up my ENTIRE external drive with every backup in situations where the previous backup happened when the external drive was not attached. How do I stop this from happening?

 

[satcomer]

System preferences->Time Machine, Options, + sign to exclude things and - sign to let Time Machine backup items.

 

[PatriotInvasion]

My external drive is removed from the Exclude list under Options and it backs up to my Time Capsule. The problem is when I remove the external drive for a day or two, Time Machine makes hourly backups of my Mac's drive as it should.

Then, when I plug back in my external drive, Time Machine seems to be referencing the latest backup and not seeing the external drive, so it thinks it needs to backup the entire drive again, instead of just what's changed. This can't be right.

 

[PatriotInvasion]

I called AppleCare tonight on my way home from work and the guy gave me some run around story about how you can just set up Time Machine to backup the external drive separately.

I knew he didn't know what the heck he was talking about, and I let him know he was trying to explain to me how to set up the external as a secondary backup disk. Although, he assured me he understood what I wanted to do.

Pretty frustrating that I paid $250 for AppleCare and they have people essentially putting me on hold to go Google the same "articles" that I can Google myself.

I'm guessing that Time Machine just isn't designed to do what I want unless the external drive is permanently connected to my Mac.